


Quietly Into the Night

by alchemystique



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Captain Cobra Swan, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:06:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1977081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry wants a better view of the holiday fireworks than Storybrooke ever has, so Killian, Emma and Henry take a little trip. Just 4th of July fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quietly Into the Night

**Quietly Into the Night**

The wheel of the Jolly is familiar beneath his hands, but as wonderful as it is to feel that hand-shined wood and hear her creak and groan and sigh around him, it is nothing to the effort it is taking him to keep himself in check around poor Henry, who had excitedly suggested this expedition the moment he heard the news that the Jolly Roger was back.

Emma, the distracting temptress that she is, stands steadfast near the bow of the ship, the breeze whipping at her golden hair while she keeps careful watch of Henry up in the rigging. She’s bedecked in a tantalizing soft sort of sweater, her sun-darkened skin peaking out through the mesh-like fabric, a glowing beacon to guide him to his lodestar.

(As if he ever needed one.)

She is the most beautiful creature his eyes have ever beheld, and even the Jolly acknowledges it, flying fast and true along the coastline as they head towards their destination. 

Emma turns to look at him them, the soft smile on her face cutting dimples into her cheeks, her eyes alight with mischievous intent, and Killian has never felt more at home than when she calls out to her son, and rather than asking him down throws out a challenge, her fingers digging into rope as she swings herself up after Henry, scaling the rigging as though she’s done it a million times.

Mother and son’s laughter trickles down over him as the sails catch a new wind and the ship lurches - he shoots a terrified look at the two imbeciles flying about like inept simians, but the both of them are grinning ear to ear and thankfully haven’t fallen to their deaths.

 _Pirates_ , the both of them, giddy at the thought of a little danger. He shakes his head in bemusement, wondering at his luck to find the two bravest fools in this strange land - wondering at the abundance of love he has for them, wondering at this _family_ he’s been allowed to join.  
  
The Jolly drags inexorably forward as Emma’s bright laughter drifts across the stern, and Killian calls out a warning the goes entirely unheeded by mother or son.

_Pirates_

———

Henry has his mothers ‘telephone’ out - Killian is still quite convinced there is magic involved in it’s workings, this thing that has libraries of information both helpful and useless just a tap away, can make immediate and live connections to anyone in the world, will give real lime weather updates, however shoddy they are (Mostly sunny - Swan, this device is not to be trusted, can’t you smell the storm in the air?) and can pinpoint your location on a map that’s been photographed from the stars.

Or so Henry had led him to believe, when he finally explained “GPS” and laughed a bit about Killian’s methods of charting a course.

"Are we there yet?"

Henry grimaces at his mother and she laughs softly at whatever in joke she’s just made, and though he’s beginning to understand more and more this is one he’s not quite sure the origins of - he’s disappointed merely for the sake of the secret smile she’ll give him when he’s in on it, a treasure he can’t quite believe is his to keep.

"Your phone sucks, mom."

"Yeah, well, you told me you could find it."

The boy sticks his tongue out, and it still takes considerable willpower on Killian’s part not to call the boy out on his impertinence - Emma just ruffles Henry’s hair to fierce protest. This lands form’s of corporal punishment still mystify him. 

The sun is beginning to fall below the horizon, and there are no navigable stars that might give him direction even if he did know where they were going, but a moment later they round the peak of a jutting peninsula and Henry hoots merrily.

"There it is!"

The beach is a long ways off - the people merely dots along the shoreline from this distance, and the glare from the setting sun makes it impossible to plot out the geography of the land, but Henry had assured him this was not a journey that needed a landing point.

They drop anchor, Emma failing miserably at hiding the grin on her face at all his seafaring phrases, more than a few of which he’s used in far more _private_ moments, and then its all a flurry of activity as Henry runs around setting up the picnic he’d packed for them all.

"Explain to me again why we decided to sail off into the sunset?"

Henry rolls his eyes at the turn of phrase, and he makes a note to figure out why - it must mean something different here. “The fireworks are better here.”

"Ah, that explains it." It doesn’t explain it at all.

"No one from Storybrooke is actually American, so they don’t really do the whole event like the rest of the country does it," Henry continues, obviously catching on to Killian’s lack of understanding.

"The day the charming pilot destroyed the alien race intent on obliterating mankind."

Emma barks our a laugh. “That was a _movie_ Killian.”

"Yes, Independence Day. Henry informed me today was that day."

Henry looks a little guilty but still terribly amused, and Killian feels his cheeks flush as Emma smiles fondly at him. 

"Today is mostly an excuse to get drunk and blow things up, but technically it’s the day the US declared its independence from it’s sovereign."

"And you celebrate by drinking heavily and creating colorful explosions."

Henry’s grin is verging on mad. “It’s _patriotic_ Killian.”

"Ah, yes. A vital step to becoming a pirate is completely abandoning one’s sense of patriotism, so I apologize if I’m a bit rusty." He pauses, eyeing Henry as the boy digs into a box with enthusiasm well beyond patriotic gusto. "I prefer the aliens."

Henry goes on to babble nonsensically about British imperialism while Emma spreads out on one of the blankets laid out along the deck, digging into a basket for a bottle of wine she’d packed earlier. She hands him off a bottle of his preferred ale, still chilled after their journey, and Henry eyes the basket carefully as he produces a shiny bag filled with thin sticks.

These, Killian recognizes - he and Liam had never really had the money necessary to procure them, but once they’d snuck into a particularly swanky party the day after Killian had received his commission, and he can’t even remember what the celebration had been for, but there had been wine and beautiful women who loved a man in uniform, and there’d been a particularly breasty blonde who had made Killian blush and stammer and _wish_ he could speak to women the way his brother could.

She’d found him charming, though, and he’d managed through his ineptitude to make a fine enough impression that she dragged him off into the hedgerows, glittering combustibles crackling and sparkling in their hands as she pulled him in for a kiss - his first, and not a bad one, if he does say so himself. 

Up until the moment he dropped his sparkler and nearly lit his breaches aflame.

"Are you sure that’s wise, lad?"

"I promise not to light the ship on fire," he says, but he’s already got his fathers metal flame device in hand (lighter, he recalls, it’s a _lighter_ ), the package cinched between his teeth as he eyes one in his hand with maniacal intent.

"Good, because it took me a whole lot of trouble to get it back," Emma says, and Killian feels his heart clench around the words as she slips closer to him across the length of the blanket. 

It’s new, this sudden devotion Emma has to him - something he’s seen her show for others but never quite the same with him (the way she’d kissed him back to life from drowning sparkles and cracks in his mind) - it’s something he’s been giving her for nearly as long as he’s known her but this - this is something else entirely.

His _ship_ is back beneath his feet, and despite having found a home without her its a bit of a wonderful shock to have her back. But the thing that he keeps coming back to is the _how_. 

The how is this: another catastrophe, another adventure spent slogging through forest, another villain to conquer, they’d landed in Wonderland, the bloody awful place that it was, and somehow, down by the docks they’d stumbled upon a very familiar vessel. 

(Of course immediately after casting eyes upon her he’d been struck on the back of the head - Emma tells him it was Blackbeard, because of course, of course the man was alive and intent on ruining Killian’s life - and woken up with Will Scarlett leaning over him, poking idly at his forehead like that had ever helped anyone, and he was _on his ship_ , sailing back towards Storybrooke, Emma grinning idly at him from her resting spot near the helm. He still doesn’t know how she did it, and no one seems to want to tell the secret, but it’s hardly important considering the outcome. She’d gotten it back for him.)

"Gross," Henry mutters, glancing away from the two of them, and Killian realizes he’s been staring. But then, so has Emma.

"Shut up and play with your fire, kid."

"Yes ma’am," he says and lights a third sparkler, his eyes gleaming as he swirls them around making patterns. 

Emma tugs Killian into a soft kiss while Henry isn’t looking, and she tastes like wine and happiness, her lips curved into a smile against his. He always thinks he’s prepared for this, thinks his heart is strong enough to contain the love he feels for this woman, but every time he thinks he’s close his heart bursts anew, and this small, tiny kiss is just another swell in the tempest of his adoration. 

The Jolly groans beneath them, and Killian feels his grins split wide open, jealousy or approval or a mixture of the two from his first love to his last. 

Emma curls into him as the sun falls away below the horizon, and they laugh as Henry reenacts a particularly ferocious sword fight he’d had the other day, sparks flying this way and that as he narrates the story, and Killian is easily convinced to join in a new battle. This one Henry narrates as well, and it’s only when Killian sees Emma biting back laughter with tears in her eyes that he narrows his eyes at the lad to really listen to what he’s saying.

"I’ll yield - if you say you’re a codfish!"

Emma’s chuckling erupts into amused laughter behind him and Killian quirks an eyebrow at the boy. “Bad form, lad.”

Henry grins, waving his sparkler about in amusement, and so Killian uses his momentary distraction to twirl to the side, catching the bad board with his toe, and Henry goes toppling toward the deck. 

Killian uses the opportunity to pluck the stick from his hand, using the hook to yank him back to his feet, and Henry pouts at the twin sparklers pointing straight at him.

"That’s cheating," he says, and shoots a quick, wide eyed glance at his mother.

"Hardly. It’s called knowing your surroundings."

He hands both back to the lad regardless, and the boy eyes him carefully. “Yeah, well, give me three hundred years and I’ll know my surroundings as well as you.”

He ruffles the boys hair and receives a fierce glare in return, and it’s only a moment later that the homes around the edge of the shoreline all begin at once to douse their lights. 

Killian does the same with the lanterns he’s lit to keep Henry from careening overboard, and Emma tugs him back down onto the blankets while Henry grabs a monstrous pile of blankets and heads toward the helm.

"Should we go with him?" Killian asks, and her smile is soft and amused. 

"I think he’s trying to give us some privacy," she stage whispers, and he can see Henry pause carefully, shake his head and storm off up the steps of the ship.  
  
Killian chuckles, and Emma curls in closer to him. There is some sort of music playing off the coastline, something surely meant for those gathered along the beach, and he can’t make out much more than a hum of instruments as the night goes quiet around them. There’s a sense of anticipation in him as the silence continues for a long heavy moment, and then he hears a blast like a cannon, his eyes following the path of a firework up, up up - the device explodes into a whirl of color, cascading down over the bay and the crowd far off shouts out their enthusiasm.

He watches for a few minutes before he realizes he’s being stared at, and turns to look at Emma. She stares unabashedly, the shadows on her face coming into deep contrast with every blast of light overhead.

"You’re missing the show, love."

She hums, curling her hand around his neck as she shakes her head. “Just kiss me already, you silly pirate,” she says.

He is only too happy to oblige, and again, he is reminded of that first kiss, of twirling a lock of bright white hair against his finger as his mind swirled with unfocused lust, but that quickly morphs as Swan hums again beneath him, her fingers sliding around to tug at his hair, changing the angle and pressing closer to him, knees bumping idly as he drags her in closer.

They don’t see much of the show - light bursting behind his eyelids as he slides a hand up the length of her back, noise crackling above them as she swipes her tongue across his lips, distant music twinkling around them when they break for air and just _stare_ for a moment, because they can, because they _want_ to. Her fingertips sear into his flesh, her smile digs into his soul, the press of her lips the wind that drags him wherever she wants him to go, and gladly he does.

When they finally break for air they catch the last set, colors flashing merrily around them while the Jolly creaks and groans right along, Emma’s hand curled into his, tracing some intricate pattern into his palm, and they are quiet as it ends and the crowd along the beach bursts into wild applause, lights flickering back on around the edge of the shore.

Henry calls out from the helm. “Is it safe to come out now?”

"Depends on your definition, young Master Mills," Killian calls back just to hear Henry’s groan, and he slowly unfurls himself from around Emma in order to roust the boy from the wheel. 

He changes a glance back as he mounts the stairs, finds Emma still watching him, that same soft smile on her face, and the Jolly sighs right along with him as he turns away again, the love he’s felt for so long mirrored in her gaze, and he grins as Henry wearily stands, blankets bunched around his shoulders and a sleepy grin on his face as Killian pats his shoulder and steers him off toward his mother.

Home, he thinks, is a fine thing.

The Jolly Roger catches a quick wind as he unfurls the sails, and Killian can almost imagine the old girl is agreeing with him.


End file.
